WhatsApp has joined the rarefied club of apps with over 3 billion monthly active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during the company’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday.
The milestone places WhatsApp alongside its sibling app, Facebook, as one of the few platforms in the world to cross the 3 billion user threshold.
Founded in 2009 and acquired by Meta (then Facebook) in 2014 for $19 billion, WhatsApp has grown steadily without ads or subscription fees.
The app reached 2 billion monthly users in 2020 and has now added another billion in just four years, cementing its dominance in global messaging.
AI usage on WhatsApp
This massive user base is becoming increasingly important as Meta pivots towards artificial intelligence.
According to Meta CFO Susan Li, WhatsApp is now the most active platform for Meta’s AI tools across its suite of apps. Most users are currently engaging with Meta AI via one-on-one chats, she added.
“We see people engage with Meta AI from several different entry points. WhatsApp continues to see the strongest Meta AI usage across our family of apps,” Li said.
- Zuckerberg also pointed out that while WhatsApp is a powerful entry point for AI in many parts of the world, adoption in the United States lags due to users’ preference for default SMS apps.
- To bridge that gap, Meta recently launched a standalone Meta AI app targeted at U.S. users, positioning it as a go-to personal AI assistant.
“We’re in a different position in the U.S. than we are in most of the rest of the world on WhatsApp. So I think that the Meta AI app as a standalone is going to be particularly important… as the main personal AI that people use,” Zuckerberg said.
WhatsApp Business
Beyond consumer use, WhatsApp is also proving valuable for Meta’s business ambitions. The app’s business-facing platform, WhatsApp Business, played a major role in helping Meta generate $510 million in Q1 revenue from its family of apps.
Meta is now integrating AI tools into WhatsApp Business, including a new dashboard that allows businesses to train Meta AI using their own data, such as content from their websites, WhatsApp profiles, Instagram pages, or Facebook accounts.
The company is also testing the ability for businesses to activate AI-powered chatbots to handle customer conversations on the platform.
Meta’s Q1 performance
In its Q1 2025 results, Meta reported that its Family of apps, comprising Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, recorded an average of 3.43 billion daily active people (DAP), an increase of 6% year-over-year.
- The company also disclosed that ad impressions delivered across its Family of Apps increased by 5% year-over-year, while average price per ad increased by 10% year-over-year.
- Meta’s revenue for the quarter was $42.31 billion, an increase of 16% year-over-year.
